Beyond The Compliment (Flash Fiction)

Flash Fiction #176

Adi: I am glad the meeting is over. Now listen to me, Lulan. You have really improved. The way you describe the issue and present your thought. You are so different now from when I first knew you.

San: I totally agree. Lulan, you’ve changed. I would say a totally different person now from several years ago.

Lulan: Really? Thank you for the compliment, but… I can’t help feeling that people have been talking about me when I am out of hearing. Was I annoying? Do you feel that I am less annoying than before? I have always tried to project the best image. Always. Does this mean that even if I was trying to be my best self, I still ended up a pathetic, laughable figure of annoyance.  

Adi: Now, Lulan, you are overthinking again. Relax. Nobody is talking about you.

San: I never gossip. Never.

Lulan: On a scale from zero to ten for annoyance, how annoying was I? How annoying am I now?

Adi: You are never annoying. So it is a zero before and a zero now.

San: I agree.

Lulan: But you said I’ve improved. From zero to zero…that doesn’t sound like an improvement at all.

Adi: All right. All right. You are self-absorbed and very annoying. Is that what you want to hear?

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I am trying to practice writing dialogs, but I can’t come up with an interesting one. This is the one I come up with. It came from a conversation a while ago when I was trying to write a list of things people try to communicate with others. However when other people hear these things, they don’t have the response that are expected of them. They think of something else. The intention of a conversation and the result of it can be very different.

This becomes even more conspicuous when different cultures are involved. Given the fact that I live in the midst of two distinct cultures, you would think it is easy to write about the different cultural connotations of a given conversation or given event, but unfortunately that is not the case. Cultural differences are something that people feel deeply but can’t express it in an interesting way. I think the main problem is that cultural differences are very messy, fluid and undefined. Since our mind are schooled in linear, defined and controlled way of expression, we cannot grasp messy subjects very well, just like we cannot navigate a territory without a map. It is said some cultures have fifty words for snow or fifty words for different shades of green. Because they have words for it, they become aware that snow have many different forms, or they can perceive fifty different green colors while people from other cultures have no such perception. So cultural differences lack these words or phrases.

Actually I think the same thing can be applied to writings about woman-woman relationship or about a lot of woman’s issues or ideas or perceptions. It is messy and undefined, beyond what our current words or phrases can describe. In order to make it more interesting, a lot have to be done and more women have to reflect on their real thoughts (not the thoughts imposed on them) and create all these words and phrases, upon which the messy reality can be deciphered in a better way.

I don’t know what I am writing right now. Some vague, unshapely ideas…